"Stuff is eaten by dogs, broken by family and friends, sanded down by the wind, frozen by the mountains, lost by the prairie, burnt off by the sun, washed away by the rain. So you are left with dogs, family, friends, sun, rain, wind, prairie and mountains. What more do you want?"
Federico Calboli

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Real Swordfighting Wasn't Like What We See in the Movies

Hardly surprising, as I believe most of the modern public has its ideas on the subject conditioned by the conventions of fencing, which has conditioned the minds of movie stuntmen. The author of this article has made the study of Medieval and Renaissance manuals on swordfighting and a re-creation of their techniques his life's work. I found the photographs (like the one above) of people exercising these skills and the illustrations taken from the old manuals very interesting.

I found the author's chest-thumping about how knowledgeable he is and how ignorant the rest of us are on swordfighting a bit obnoxious, but it's worth putting up with for the information provided.

1 comment:

All sword-fighting, martial arts, and combat-pistol instructors are "foremost" in their field, doncha know?

I have talked with some people who teach theatrical sword-fighting (Shakespeare festivals, etc.), and let's face, it is not going to be completely authentic when the ground rules are (1) It has to look exciting and (2) No one gets hurt.